


Birth

by alianora



Category: Constantine (2005)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2005-12-22
Updated: 2005-12-22
Packaged: 2018-01-25 07:16:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,048
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1638461
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alianora/pseuds/alianora
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Angela never thought she would have a child.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Birth

**Author's Note:**

  * For [LithiumDoll](https://archiveofourown.org/users/LithiumDoll/gifts).



> Written for LithiumDoll

 

 

When Angela was young, and Isabel was still her mirror image, Angela got sick.

Her parents and the doctor spoke in hushed, worried tones, and her mother cried against  
her father's shoulder.

Angela can still remember her mother crying.

She doesn't remember many of the details otherwise, but she can remember the throb of  
pain, low and aching, in her stomach and the antiseptic smell of the hospital, and Isabel  
standing beside her, holding her hand and laughing in the dark.

_You didn't believe me, Angie._

Isabel whispered things Angela couldn't hear, and then she laughed, low and bitter in her  
throat. The shadows had wings and the air stank of sulfur. Isabel was going to let the  
dark things eat her alive. Isabel's eyes were terrible and bright, and shined like the dark  
things would, if they had eyes.

When she told her parents the week after, when she was feeling better and able to sit up,  
they said she had been having a nightmare. That her fever had been high, she had been  
taking strong pain medication, Isabel loves you and _I'm so sorry, honey._

When she was little, the details weren't that important. Her sister, Izzy, loved her and  
saw things and sometimes would look at her like she was hungry.

And she loved Izzy and didn't see things and was afraid of the dark, and would never be  
able to have children.

As she got older, she started to forget that night in the hospital. She would sometimes  
have nightmares of things with Isabel's face and laughing, gleaming teeth, but they were  
just dreams.

She didn't understand when Isabel would look at her sometimes, face blank but eyes  
glinting with something dark and shadowed. She didn't understand when she woke up in  
the night, gasping, nightmares of twisting pain beneath her skin, curling her into a ball  
around her swollen stomach.

Years later now, lying writhing underneath John Constantine on a hospital floor that  
smells of antiseptic and sulfur, she remembers everything. She could almost laugh at  
the absurdity, if she could only breathe.

Isabel had been there in the hospital that first time, and had laughed, because she could  
 _see_ and Angela couldn't. Isabel knew, already, even though she was so young,  
because she would still listen to the dark when Angela turned her face away.

_I don't hear anything, Izzy._

Isabel had told her, had tried to warn her. In the dark, teeth flashing like something  
hungry, _Don't worry, Angie._ Her eyes had flickered, something hard and sharp  
behind them. _You will have a child and die in the birthing._ And she had laughed,  
bitter and choked, young voice sounding old and tired. _Better you than me._ But  
she had been crying when she said it, and Angela was so very tired and so sick that she  
couldn't understand what her sister meant.

And when she woke up, she thought it had been a dream, because Isabel was there and  
was holding a get well soon card and had hugged her tight. _You can take care of me,_  
Angie. Isabel had smiled, and she did not look hungry, but looked just like Angela  
again. Mirror images. A matched set.

Now, finally, gut twisting and straining with the demon child growing in her, gnawing its  
way out of her body, Angela knows what Isabel had known when they were small.

Angela is going to die.

Isabel had made a bargain somehow. One soul for the father and his hell, one body for  
the son. She had given of herself to Hell, and was giving her sister to bring Hell to the  
world.

Or maybe she hadn't bargained. Had just seen it, known it would happen, and let her  
sister die in pieces on the floor of a hospital.

Like Isabel had died, days before, just a few feet away in the same pool of water where  
Angela had fallen to Hell.

Maybe Isabel had given her sister to the son of the devil.

Or maybe she just didn't want to be the one who brought the world to Hell.

Angela remembers how Isabel's laughter rang in the air as she whispered to her sister,  
sick and sweating on the bed.

 _They need someone who can see in the dark, Angie._ Isabel's face, both angry and  
sad, leaned over her. _Can you remember?_

Angela is going to die, ripped to pieces by her ill gotten son and her sister's cowardice.

She is going to die, beneath the hands of a man who can see the dead thing crawling  
beneath her skin, who is gasping and choking as he speaks words that won't stop what is  
happening.

There is salt on her lips, and she wonders hazily if John knows that he is crying. His  
voice is getting horse, and he keeps stumbling over the words.

The face beneath her skin presses upwards, straining to push through to her side of the  
world, and the pain is so sharp, she wishes she could pass out. But for some reason, she  
can't. All she can do is open her mouth in silent screams. She wants to fight, but John is  
weighing her down, hand burning against her swollen stomach. The Latin echoes  
strangely and she can feel it ache inside her bones.

It isn't supposed to be like this.

She has heard that giving birth is painful, but that was the normal kind of childbirth. The  
kind without the devil involved, surrounded by doctors and bright hospital lights and a  
man, holding her hand, urging her to push.

It isn't supposed to be the other way around. The woman giving birth is supposed to be  
surrounded by friends and family, laughing and cheering, full of joy.

Instead, there is a hospital full of demons in human form, awaiting the birth of their  
Master's son.

Waiting for her to die.

The man holding her hand is not supposed to be chanting in Latin and trying to push the  
child inside her back where it came from.

The child inside her is supposed to be a joy, not her destruction.

Angela never thought she would have a child.

Angela never thought her sister would commit suicide.

Angela never thought that demons were real.

_I'm so sorry, Angie._

END

 


End file.
